


Sweet, untouchable you

by energie_vie



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fight Sex, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Light Angst, POV Nile Freeman, Romance, Smut, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26908507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/energie_vie/pseuds/energie_vie
Summary: "The moment has lost some of its intensity and she thinks she may have overdone it. She still doesn't fully understand what's going on and she would like to go back to making out, possibly more."After a mission goes wrong, Booker and Nile get into a massive fight, which ends with them having sex and revealing their feelings.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 12
Kudos: 172





	Sweet, untouchable you

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Cruelty by Kosheen.

Saying that this mission had gone terribly wrong would be the understatement of the century. Nile can vouch for that, she has been alive for the entirety of the 21st and some more, both before and after. In fact, it's probably one of the worst. Definitely top 5.

It's the seemingly easy ones that are doomed to fail spectacularly, she ponders while staring out the passenger window. There's not much to see outside, they're on a highway, but the blur of the trees and the dark sky are somehow comforting. Booker is driving and he hasn't said a word since they left the crime scene, so to speak. He's upset, Nile can tell from the clenched jaw and the white knuckles on the steering wheel. It's understandable, though, she's upset too, so she leaves him to stew in peace. She knows him too well to know when to back off.

On paper the mission seemed simple enough: sneak into a mansion whose drug dealer owner was on holiday, retrieve invaluable data from a safe in the study and get out as quickly as possible, preferably without having to kill anyone. The sneaking in part had gone smoothly. The sneaking out.. not so much. The safe had activated a silent alarm, so they had found themselves having to deal with way more bodyguards than the intel had stated. With no other viable options, they had split up, with Nile acting as decoy to allow Booker a headstart. They were supposed to meet at the car, two kilometers away from the mansion. 

Needless to say, that hadn't worked out very well either: she had gotten cornered by two of the bodyguards and the last thought that went through her head before getting shot and falling backwards through a window on the third floor was: _Why the fuck do these guys have machine guns?_ She had woken up in excruciating pain, Booker cradling her head in his lap. She had no idea how many bones she had broken and how many organs she had ruptured, but based on Booker's glassy eyes and shaking hands, it had been bad. Really bad. The only upside was that they had managed to get the data, so at least there was that.

A loud buzzing brings her back to the present and while struggling to fish the phone out of her pocket, she wonders how the hell it survived the fall. She frowns when she sees who's calling.

'Hey, boss.'

_'Nile, what the fuck is going on? You were supposed to call when you were done. Why does Booker have his phone turned off? What the hell happened?'_

Andy's tone is a bit frantic, so Nile's becomes apologetic.

'Sorry, Andy, things went haywire. There was a silent alarm and we had to handle a lot more bodyguards than we were prepared for.'

 _'Son of a bitch! Are you guys ok?_ '

'Yeah, we managed to get the data. All good.'

_'How many casualties?'_

'Um.. I don't know actually. Ten? Twelve? I died at a certain point and I kind of missed the end of the show,' she chuckles quietly. From her left she hears a steady stream of curses, but chooses to ignore it for the time being.

_'Where are you now?'_

'On A10, about two hours away from the safehouse, right, Seb?'

Booker just grunts, so Nile takes that as a yes.

_'Ok. Have Booker call me when you get there.'_

'Sure thing, boss.' Slipping the phone in the glove box she turns towards Booker. 'Andy wants you to call her when we get to the safehouse.'

'Ok.'

'What happened to your phone? She said she tried to call you but it's turned off.'

'I know. I turned it off myself.'

Nile frowns. 'Why?'

'I didn't feel like talking to Andy.'

'What? Why?'

'I just didn't. Can we drop it now?' He snaps and Nile's eyebrows shoot up. Booker never snaps at her and she feels it like a punch in the chest. He's always sweet and gentle with her, as if she were a porcelain doll and even though she'd most likely hate it coming from someone else, she loves it coming from him. She loves _him_ , in all honesty, though she's trying very hard not to dwell on it most days. He has always seemed oblivious to the signals she sends, so Nile just assumes he's not interested in her in _that_ way and, being a gentleman, he's letting her down subtly because he doesn't want to lose their easy and warm friendship. It hurts like hell and there are moments when she feels like taking the lead and gambling everything on a single card, just to have her assumption verified. Then again, card games have never been her forte, so she resigns herself to being forever friendzoned. She chuckles quietly when she realises she hasn't used this phrase since she was a teenager, literally a lifetime ago. Possibly two.

Booker doesn't say anything else. She looks at him from the corner of her eye and the man is as still as a statue, hands forcefully gripping the steering wheel. If he didn't blink from time to time, Nile would worry that he's fallen asleep with his eyes open. He's on autopilot, basically, so it looks like he's more upset than she had thought. However, she's wise enough not to push it, so she resumes staring out the window.

It's way past midnight when they make it to the safehouse, dirty, bloody and exhausted. It's a small cottage outside a town in the middle of fucking nowhere, but at least it has running water. The door creaks, there's dust everywhere and spiderwebs in all available corners, but the bed looks inviting and Nile just wants to crash in it.

'You take a shower first, I'll go call Andy.' Booker is leaning against the door, eyes closed.

'Thanks. Can't wait to get rid of these clothes, too much blood on them,' she laughs softly, but Booker clenches his fists and takes a deep breath.

'There's nothing to laugh about,' he mutters darkly, then turns on his heel and goes outside. Nile just stares at his retreating back, trying to work out what's gotten him in this state, but figures they can talk about it later.

When she exits the bathroom, she can hear Booker talking on the phone just outside the cottage, too loud for it to be a regular debrief. In fact, he's almost shouting, but Nile figures he's holding back only because he's talking to Andy and he respects her too much. She's also wondering how long she's spent in the shower if they're still on the phone but she doesn't have time to calculate because Booker is stalking in, slamming the front door and throwing the phone on the table.

'Did you get into a fight with her?'

'Doesn't matter,' and there it is, that clipped tone and the clenched jaw and she feels her temper rising.

'It matters to _me_ ,' she snaps.

'Of course it does,' he sneers and Nile's patience is wearing thin.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Nothing. I'm going to take a shower. You should sleep.'

'I'll wait for you.'

'Suit yourself,' and it sounds so cold and distant that she feels like crying. Or punching him. And since she's never been good at handling conflicting emotions, she settles for the easy way out: anger. So when he comes out of the bathroom ten minutes later, she wastes no time.

'Are you going to talk to me _now_?'

'I have nothing to say,' he mutters obstinately and Nile's tired of this childish behaviour.

'Okay, Booker, what the fuck is your problem?' He visibly flinches. She hasn't called him anything but Seb for a very long time but right now she's too pissed off to care. 'You're acting like a spoiled brat!'

'I'm the brat?' he asks incredulously. 'You're the one who's reckless and selfish!'

Well, that stings. 'What the hell are you on about?'

'That little stunt you pulled earlier today.'

'You'll need to be clearer, if that's not outside your communicating capacities! Are you expecting me to telepathically figure out what's bothering you?' Nile bristles and it's a bit of a low blow, but he's called her selfish and reckless, so screw his sensitivity.

'You decided that you were going to be the decoy and then bolted, leaving me with no choice but to follow your plan.'

'So that's the problem, that I took the initiative?'

'No, that's not the problem and don't you _dare_ imply that's what bothered me!' He's definitely angry now and if Nile were only a spectator, she would swoon at how he impatiently pushes his hair from where it had fallen into his eyes. But she's angry too and if he wants to do this, by all means. 

'Then what the hell bothered you? It was a good plan.'

'You got fucking killed!'

It's become a full-on shouting match and Nile is thankful that the cottage doesn't have any immediate neighbours. Still, she prefers to be cautious.

'Stop screaming, we're not in the woods!'

'I don't care if anyone hears! You died, Nile! You were shot and fell from the third floor. Do you know how many bullets there were?' Booker looks at her intently, as if expecting her to know the answer. She doesn't, but she can hazard a guess. Machine guns, remember?

'How is that even relev-'

'Twenty-three!' Booker cuts her off, still shouting. 'You want to know how I know? Because I counted them all while I waited for you to wake up. Over and over again I counted because you took ten minutes, Nile. Ten. Fucking. Minutes!'

She's too worked up to notice the shift in his tone, pleading, almost scared. In any other circumstances, she would soften hers, reassure him that everything's ok, that they're both safe, that she's always going to come back to him. But these are special circumstances and she can't seem to be able to calm down.

'So what? We had a mission!' and it sounds so clinical and detached that Booker actually throws his hands in the air. 

'I don't care about the mission!' he roars and a separate part of Nile's brain registers that this is their first real fight. She doesn't like it at all. 'I care about _you_ and if you prefer to do things your own way without giving a rat's ass about _my_ feelings...'

'Then maybe you and I aren't as good a team as we thought!' Nile interjects angrily and Booker looks like he's been slapped in the face. They stare each other down for a few seconds, breathing ragged and eyes blazing, until he snatches his phone from the table and turns towards the door. 

'Where the hell are you going?'

'I can't be in the same room with you right now,' he says and he sounds so weary that it only seems to fuel Nile's rage. 

'Typical Booker,' she smiles contemptuously. 'Let's just ignore the problem, maybe it'll go away on its own.'

The last words are drowned by the sound of the slamming door. She grabs the first thing she sees, which happens to be her phone, and hurls it towards the wall.

'FUCK!!!'

Her pulse is racing, her ears are buzzing and she feels like breaking all the glasses and plates in this damn safehouse. If there are any, she doesn't know because she's never been here before. She leans on the kitchen counter and tries to breathe in and out slowly when she hears the front door opening.

'Back for round two?' she asks defeatedly and wonders how the hell they ended up like this. Booker just drops his phone back on the table and then stalks determinedly towards her, grabs her face and smashes his lips against hers. It's not a kiss _per se_ , not yet anyway, but it could be if Nile were able to gather her wits and respond in kind. Except she doesn't because her brain seems to have stopped working. This is the last thing she had expected him to do and she was so sure that they'd never be anything more than friends that she can't really process what's happening. Booker mistakes her stillness for rejection and pulls back, eyes wide and mouth slack.

'I'm- I'm sorry, I.. I shouldn't have done that, I'll- I'll sleep in the car tonight,' he stammers dejectedly and turns once more towards the door. It's the little sigh at the end that snaps Nile back to reality. 

'Oh, no, you don't!' She hauls him by the t-shirt, turns him around and slams him against the nearest available surface, which happens to be the fridge. It wobbles dangerously and the air leaves Booker's lungs with a _whoosh_ and Nile should be considerate and allow the man to gather his bearings but she's not because she's wanted this for far too long. She doesn't even stop to think what this means, if it's just an outlet for the rage and the frustration or if she's actually been misreading Booker this whole time. She just closes her eyes and desperately hopes it's the latter.

His lips are softer than they have any right to be and he tastes like coffee and cinnamon, which makes no sense at all, but Nile decides that's probably the endorphins in her body going rampant and she bites his lower lip just because she can. He lets out a strangled moan that travels like an electrical shock all over her skin and settles somewhere low in her belly. So she does it again and again, just to hear those choked sounds and to feel his arms tighten around her with every bite and pull. When she starts feeling lightheaded, she releases his mouth and moves to his neck, sucking and licking, her hands roaming on his shoulders and arms and chest.

'Ten minutes, Nile,' Booker half whines in between gasps and hisses. 'Ten minutes.'

'I know. I'm sorry.'

'Please don't do that to me again. I can't lose you.'

'You won't. I promise.'

She pulls back to look him in the eyes and she doesn't know if she should say anything else or not. The moment has lost some of its intensity and she thinks she may have overdone it. She still doesn't fully understand what's going on and she would like to go back to making out, possibly more, but Booker is looking at her so intensely that she feels frozen to the spot. He's still leaning against the fridge and she's still glued to him head to toe and even though he's the one who started this whole thing, Nile is feeling self-conscious for how she continued it.

'I can hear you thinking,' he chuckles quietly. 

'Yeah? What am I thinking?'

'You're wondering where this leaves us,' Booker smiles and he's way too cocky for Nile's liking but the fact he nailed it in one try just proves how well he knows her. She hates not having the upper hand. She also hates gambling, mainly because she sucks at it, but something is nagging at her, some gut feeling that's telling her to _act now, think later_ , so she leans into him and whispers in his ear: 'Right now I don't care where it leaves us. I want you!' and resumes kissing his neck. 

Booker groans brokenly and before she can register what's happening, he grabs the back of her thighs, lifts her on the counter and attacks her mouth. It's all tongue and teeth and Nile moans shamelessly in his mouth and fists his t-shirt, until he drops his forehead on her shoulder to catch his breath. She drags her nails across his scalp and feels genuinely giddy when he shivers slightly, so she does it again, trying to stifle the spark of anticipation in her stomach.

'I want you so badly!' Booker moans but he's still holding back, god only knows why, so Nile gives him one more push. 

'Then take me, Seb!' she whispers and Booker's control snaps. It takes him less than five seconds to cross the room and he never breaks the kiss, nor does he open his eyes. In the back of her mind, Nile begrudges him his navigation skills, but then they both fall on the bed and his lips move to her jaw, then her earlobe, her neck, while one of his hands rests on her thigh and his hips rock slowly into hers. She can feel how hard he is and that spark of anticipation from earlier turns into a blaze. She's burning and she wants to feel his skin pressed against hers, so she lifts his t-shirt as much as their current position allows it and scrapes her nails against his lower back. 

'Fuck!' Booker hisses against her neck and in one fluid motion, he takes off his t-shirt and throws it haphazardly over his shoulder. Nile has seen him shirtless before and he's a sight to behold, but all of her senses are amplified and she notices little details, like the mole above his belly button or the little scar above his left nipple. She'd like to explore every inch of his skin, but the blaze under her skin is only growing stronger, so she thinks to herself, _next time_ and takes off her own t-shirt. Booker instantly latches himself to her right breast and Nile doesn't understand how this can feel so good.

'Whatever you do, please don't stop!' she gasps, one hand pulling his hair and the other gliding on his back and shoulders. 

'Only if there's an earthquake,' he murmurs before switching to her other nipple and his tone is so serious that Nile actually giggles. 'Or if you tell me to stop,' he adds quietly and she has no doubt that he would within a heartbeat. 

'Never.'

'Good,' he mutters against her belly button, 'because I think I might actually _die_.' He's pressing open-mouthed kisses along the waistband of her sweatpants and inching them lower, but he's moving too slowly and Nile's way past caring that she might seem desperate, so she pushes them past her hips along with her panties and lets Booker do the rest. Her thighs fall open of their own accord and Booker wastes no time in settling between them. The first stroke of his tongue has her see exploding stars behind closed eyelids. The next ones turn her into a writhing mess and he splays his hands on her hips to hold her in place.

'So good, Seb! You're so _good_!' She's getting vocal and panting loudly and she can feel his answering moan vibrate through her entire body. 

'Not good enough for you,' he pauses just for a second, only to resume even more fervently. His tone is serious again and Nile feels like crying when she realises that this is what he actually thinks. 

'I'll be the judge of that,' she mutters breathlessly and taps his shoulders. Booker simply ignores her, so she taps more urgently. 'I want to feel you,' she all but whines and when he finally starts moving from between her legs, she drags him upwards and slips her tongue in his mouth, at the same time reaching inside his sweatpants to stroke him. He's hot and hard and Nile tries to change their position somehow because she wants to taste him, but he's shaking his head and whispering, _next time_. 

Sweatpants discarded, Booker rearranges themselves on the bed and the moment he starts easing in, Nile holds her breath and closes her eyes. When he's buried deep within her, she exhales on a sigh and smiles languidly.

'I love you,' she says opening her eyes and his go so wide it's actually comical. 'You can't tell me you didn't know, at times I've been painfully obvious,' she chides and the crestfallen look on his face is absolutely delicious. 

'I- I-,' Booker stutters and Nile just lifts an eyebrow, clenching herself around him. He hisses and swears and rocks slowly into her and Nile feels like she's soaring because his heart is in his eyes and there's nothing he can do about it. 

'I never thought this is how we would exchange declarations of love,' he finally says and the relief in his entire posture is almost palpable.

'How, then?' she asks breathlessly and pushes her hips back to meet him halfway. 

'Nile, my love, do you really want to have this conversation _now_?' He sounds out of breath and she can feel his thighs trembling. She shrugs and smiles mischievously. 

'Fuck me, Seb! I'm all yours.'

It's the end of any coherent conversation. Breathing becomes laboured, the sound of skin on skin intensifies and Booker's _fuck_ and _oh, god, yes_ are interspersed with Nile's _yes, like that_ and _please, don't stop_. For some reason she had imagined him to be the quiet type in bed, but Booker is just as vocal as her and she is convinced she could come just by listening to the sounds he makes. He's set an unrelenting pace, his brow is slightly furrowed with how focused he is and Nile feels small beads of sweat falling on her breasts and belly. The blaze under her skin is threatening to turn into a full blast and when Booker takes one of her hands, places it between her legs and whispers _touch yourself_ , she manages only two circles before she comes hard, shouting his name. It takes him a few more seconds to follow her, head falling on her shoulder and arms shaking.

He's quiet when he comes and Nile wonders if it's always like that or if he just doesn't have any more energy. She'll see what happens next time, when she'll start by using her mouth on him and take it from there. _Next time_ , she thinks and she feels a bit dizzy thinking about the many next times that are waiting for them.

'I love you,' comes Booker's muffled voice and Nile's heart almost bursts at the seams.

'I know now,' she smiles and keeps carding her fingers through his hair. A random thought pops into her head. 'Why were you fighting with Andy?' Maybe it's not the best topic to discuss after sex, but she's genuinely curious. 

Booker lazily rolls over and turns on his side to look at her. 'I told her I was angry with you and she said I was an idiot. And that I should talk to you instead of giving you the cold shoulder,' he adds sheepishly. 

'Andy's wise,' says Nile seriously and then promptly starts giggling. Booker just rolls his eyes good-naturedly.

'I'm still working on expanding my communicating capacities,' he mutters grumpily and Nile just laughs. 'And I'll work on my reckless behaviour,' she adds smiling. 

Their easy banter is interrupted by Booker's phone buzzing on the table. He gets up to check it, while Nile heads to the bathroom, wondering if her phone is still functioning after being closely acquainted with the wall. Given the fall it had survived, she leans towards yes. From the bathroom she can hear Booker laughing. 

'What is it?' she asks when she exits, but Booker just grins and hands her the phone. There's a text from Andy. 

_"So, did you guys kiss and make up?"_


End file.
